Rainbows

On the way back from Rochester to Richmond on Aug 24, a thunderstorm passed us and went to the east. It was there in the east when the sun set in the west. This to me means Rainbow Warning. I looked all over the place for rainbows and found it as we were heading down I-95 south of Richmond. It got brighter as time went on, and produced some impressive scenes over the already futuristic appearance of the bridges of Va 895 over the James River. I took some pictures but they did not turn out well. I did get a good picture of the rainbow near a grocery store.

What do rainbows mean, anyway? The traditional Biblical story says that it is God's forgiveness after the 40-day flood that killed the rest of creation. I suspect this story had its origin in a huge flood sometime around 3000-5000 years ago. A collection of people rode out the storm and thanked the powers that be that they had no control over that they were finally safe. Of course with the sun shining and the storm still around, a rainbow would have shone; hence the symbolism. There is also the Wizard of Oz interpretation, that is, that birds could fly over it but I can't. And there is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow; getting a lot of money is just as elusive as chasing down the end of the rainbow - if you try to find it, it moves further on.

The scientific explanation is that the setting sun shines on raindrops of a storm on the the other side of the sky. These raindrops refract the sun's rays much as a glass prism does, and splits the light into individual colors by wavelength. This means in order for a rainbow to form, both sunny skies and stormy weather must prevail. The rainbow separates the yin and yang of the weather; indeed, one side of the rainbow will be brighter than the other side. So to me rainbows represent a transition. It would be a good symbol for weddings, coming-of-age ceremonies, retirement parties, and so forth.

Planeattack coincidences

Earlier I said that I came up with a name for the horrible events of 2001. September 11 is not good; it means foreboding for all September 11s thereafter, and it is not kind to those who have September 11 as a birthday. I had come up with Towerfall as an alternative, but that ignores the attack on the Pentagon. I settled on Planeattack, which says that the planes did the attack rather than things from the planes, and further the name of the lead hijacker, Atta, appears in the name.

Regardless of what we call it, people have pointed out a lot of coincidences with it. For example: It occurred on the 11th of the month; the first attacking plane was American 11; the plane that attacked the Pentagon was American 77, which is 7 x 11, and 7 divides 175, which is the number of the United plane that attacked the South Tower. The number of people on American 11 was 92, and 9+2 = 11. The number of people on American 77 was 65, and 6+5 = 11. The World Trade Center looked like a big 11 on the New York skyline. The number of firefighters that were killed was 343, which is 7 x 7 x 7. The total number of New York firefighters that had ever died in duty up to September 11 was 777. 9/11 is the number to call in case of an emergency. An asteroid strike in 2077 killing hundreds of thousands in Italy in Arthur Clarke's novel "Rendezvous with Rama" is said to occur on September 11. One can continue with this for a while.

Is all this a coincidence? It surely looks like some sort of design. But I believe it was a coincidence. One can form patterns out of all sorts of things. Finding patterns like in my second paragraph above is like finding patterns in clouds or on the planet Mars. Humans have a tendency to make patterns to explain things. This is OK, if it is supported by evidence and is replicable. I did not think that all this 11 business is replicable. To prove my point I totaled the number of people who died in the terrorist attack last September. It was 3,056. I factored the number and found it was 16 x 191. That took me aback. 191 is an anagram of 9/11. Further, two previous major airliner crashes were Flight 191. I am still sure that this is all a coincidence, but my attempt to prove so only propagated the pattern. Then I found out last week that the death toll at the World Trade Center was lowered by 4, making the overall total 3,052.

I am vindicated. This may all look interesting, but it is strictly a coincidence.

Satanic Teams

I heard today that the high school of Devil’s Lake, ND, called its teams the Satans for 80 years. That seemed natural: Satan is the Devil. Some would say it was sacrilegious though. But it survived the prissy times of the 1920s and 1930s without any objection. Now in the age of political correctness, the school felt forced to change the schools’ name. How about the Red Leprechauns? It says something when a name of this sort fails to survive now whereas it did in the 1930s. That says what we are up against, now. Next thing they are going to do probably is change the town’s name. One thing that may have contributed to this is the existence of Satanism, a cult associated with extremist groups. I suppose they have a point, but still an 80-year-old name that did not refer to anything real has become victim to today’s weird happenings.

West Nile Virus

I see now that there is a case of this virus in the area where I live. The person had flu-like symptoms and went to the doctor. So that means go to the doctor if you develop such symptoms to check for West Nile. The person is better now. And again I say it is a non-epidemic. Two out of three people infected develop no symptoms. Those that do develop flu symptoms – a visit to the doctor can settle the question and there are drugs to treat the disease. It is a problem, and to some extent it can be prevented – get rid of standing water. But to wear long clothing in 100 degree weather is self-torture. Bug spray can make you feel yucky. I say get rid of standing water and report any fever or flu to the doctor. Flu is serious enough anyway – if West Nile is that bad, then so is influenza, a disease which killed hundreds of thousands including one of my great aunts in 1918 – an E6 epidemic.

Mixed-up Nursery Rhymes

Not much to blog on today. So I will give some mixed up nursery rhymes that I wrote earlier. They are either combinations of existing rhymes or permuted versions of single rhymes:

Hickory Dickory Dock

Hickory Dickory Dock
The mouse climbed up the clock
The mouse struck one,
The clock fell down,
Hickory Dickory Dock.

Little Miss Mubbard

Little Miss Mubbard
Sat on a cupboard
Eating her dogs and bones
Along came a spider
Who sat bare beside her
And so the poor girl had none.

Hey Diddle Warpdrive
The cat and the C:\ drive
The PC bombed clear to the moon.
The floppy drive cranked when it saw the abort,
And Excel ran away with the OS.

That's enough for today.

Analysis Suggests Three-Way Baseball Swap

One of my specialties is Operations Research (OR). This is a term referring to the application of mathematical techniques to real world problems. An example of a problem that OR could apply to is the assignment of Triple-A minor league baseball teams to their major league affiliates. There has been a trend towards the AAA farm team and its parent being close together; e.g., Boston and Pawtucket Red Sox, Seattle Mariners and Tacoma Rainiers, and Toledo Mud Hens and Detroit Tigers. The reason is simple: it cuts travel costs. So why not pair up minor league teams to major league ones so as to minimize the total mileage? An OR technique called the “assignment method” can apply to this.

I tried this a couple of years ago and got some interesting results. Much of the present assignments, including the above three pairs, came out like it actually is. I would think that the Florida Marlins could come up with some team closer than the Calgary Cannons, but my model actually paired them up with the farther Edmonton Trappers. The reason is that there are no teams close to either of these teams, and that it is more important to pair up closer teams than to attempt to force some team to pair with Florida.

The model did show an interesting six-way deal that would cut travel costs. Right now the Richmond Braves are an affiliate of the Atlanta Braves, the Nashville Sounds are an affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Rochester Red Wings are an affilitate of the Baltimore Orioles. Some of these are far apart, especially Richmond and Atlanta. The deal would switch these around to pair Rochester to Pittsburgh, Nashville to Atlanta, and Richmond to Baltimore. All three distances would be shorter, resulting in considerable travel cost savings.

Right now is a good time to do this. I learned that the Red Wings are now a “free agent”, meaning they can find whatever major team they can get as a parent, and so are the Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates. This means the deal is easier than ever to do right now, so I hope they consider it; that is, if the impending August 30 strike does not interfere.

Ambiguous Alert

"Amber alerts" have become popular in this country to warn of missing children and teenagers - alerts posted on highway signs and other places. At least one commentator suggests that this could be overused; e.g., a missing person could turn out to be a runaway or just merely hiding somewhere in the house. But there is another problem as well. Amber is a color. I know it is a girl's name and that it is named after a specific case, but it still is a color. An amber light warns that the traffic light is about to turn red, for instance. That could cause confusion with the national alert system for terrorism, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland It has us wondering what a red alert is. People could say there is an amber alert when all that he means is that the country is under an amber or yellow "elevated" terrorism alert, which it is right now, and not a missing person alert. So amber is ambiguous. Another name is needed, such as "missing person alert".

The Tapes

The Al Qaeda ("the Base") tapes shown today are a big public relations defeat for Al Qaeda. In this age of mediahyperism, the showing of tapes showing that Al Qaeda personnel gas dogs to death is going to turn people against the organization. Many in the US and its allies will solidify even more their feelings of disgust for the organization, and I wouild expect setbacks among fundamentalist Muslims in the Mideast as well. Many angry Muslims who describe America and Israel as the Great Evil will now describe Al Qaeda as just as evil. Al Qaeda will lose members and funds, and the Mideast will turn more to the west. Well, these Base people did it to themselves.

Farm Sanctuary

We visited the Farm Sanctuary today. This place is a farm where mistreated farm animals, including cows, pigs, goats, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, and rabbits were brought back to health and allowed to live their lives in peace. The place had no dogs, cats, or horses. It had a gift store where you can buy T-shirts, vegetarian recipe books, organic products of all kinds, and bumper stickers with such slogans as “use your own skin” and showing cattle on it. Is that a request to refuse the support of cruel treatment of cattle, or a call to go naked?

We can refuse to support the mistreatment of animals but habits are hard to break. We were brought up on hot dogs, hamburgers, eggs, and milk, and it is hard to break the habit, especially with the great quantity of restaurants that offer beef, veal, and so forth in this country. It will be along time before we treat animals humanely, and in the meantime there is a greater need – the mistreatment of humans, in prisons, Iraq, Palestine, and other places.

I-99

On my trip to Rochester, NY, I found something interesting in Pennsylvania: signs saying “Future I-99”. This is the highest number any major cross-country interstate highway can have. An I-100 would be a spur to an I-0, if one were to ever occur. It would connect Corning, NY with Williamsport, PA. Up to now US 15 connects these two places. The route once went through towns, winded around mountains, and was slow to traverse. In the last 20 years I have seen improvements radically change the road. Now interstate-like highways connect Williamsport with Covington. However they have a lot fo work to do before the road can be called I-99. There is a gas station that causes the interstate like highway to lower to 55mph. He would have to be put on a spur to the highway at an exit. There is a two-lane highway built around a dam in the 1970’s. Much of this seems too narrow so another high bridge would have to be built. But so far, they arfe ramming laines into the existing highway, and I heard that a rhubarb was caused in southern New York by the prospect of I-99 coming up through their area.

I-99 sounds sort of final. It reminds me of the year 1999, the last before the Third Millennium. Is I-99 the last of the major highways? Sure, more roads may be built, but will any be finished? I understand oil will run out by the end of the decade and the need for highways would become moot. I-99, the final highway. It sounds so final, like a highway to the end.

Baseball’s Third Strike

I am not interested much in sports. The only American football I like is that by my graduate school, Northwestern. I could give a darn about basketball, hockey, and especially auto racing. But baseball is something that I have been interested in since I was a child. I followed the Rochester Red Wings (St Louis Cardinals, then Baltimore Orioles farm team) regularly. I stopped my interest in professional baseball because my favorite teams did not win, but more importantly, because there were other things that interested me more.

Now I hear that baseball is about to have its third major walkout – when large numbers of games get cancelled. The winner of the 2002 World Series may be the same as the winner of 1994’s World Series. I do think some players and teams get far too much money, and the entire thing has become a game in which the fan is the loser. In any case, baseball has it all wrong – you don’t walk on a called third strike.

West Nile Hype

Terrorism, lying accountants, a lagging stock market. Now we have something else to worry about. West Nile Fever. This disease came to this country in 1999 and has been spreading. The media is bringing about all kinds of dire warnings about West Nile Fever – such as that there will be soon a thousand cases and that it will spread to all the states. But how much of a threat is this disease, really? I have heard from this very same media that 2 out of 3 people who pick up the virus show no symptoms. That means West Nile is a non-disease for the majority of us. The vast majority of the rest will suffer a flu-like illness. Only rarely will the dreaded encephalitis-type symptoms develop. If that’s the case, where are all the dire warnings about ordinary flu? That kills the same percentage of people. How about lightning, vehicle accidents, and falls? How about AIDS? These kill more than West Nile will ever kill, and yet we don’t hear media clangor about them. This whole thing about West Nile is a media creation. Be careful, of course, but don’t make radical changes in your lifestyle simply because of West Nile, for there is a far more serious syndrome going around – Mediahypitis.

Snakeheads

Now they are going to kill all the fish in our pond to get rid of a few evil snakeheads. They are going to drain the pond. Guess what? Ordinary fish will die because they don’t have anything to breathe. But snakeheads will simply walk to the next body of water – perhaps the Potomac. And are we about to destroy the entire world just to catch a few evil snakeheads such as Saddam?

Out of range

Numbers are getting out of their range. That is, numbers are wandering into the next higher range. The ranges are defined on my Hamlet page. What numbers not getting out of range means is that budgets can be billions of dollars but not googols. Here are some examples of why numbers don't get out of their ranges, one for each range boundary:

1. A committee of 1,500 can't get the job done.

2. If you sue for $30 trillion, you will never collect.

3. A googol or more years is preposterous - that's more years than there are elementary particles.

4. Disk drives are getting too big - the numbers of their possible states are inconceivable.

5. Logicians try too hard to define huge ordinal numbers and hence finite numbers. They can never exceed W, defined as the largest number that we will ever be able to define (notation due to Rudy Rucker).

Recently, however, numbers are getting out of their range. I mentioned earlier that my home disk drive should have a literary number of possible values, as the sequence of characters can be or could be a literary work. But my current disk drive is 80GB, putting the total number of configurations in the inconceivable range instead. Now I hear that 9/11 families are suing rich Saudi families for $1 trillion. This is 100 trillion pennies and so comes close to being a scientific (a quadrillion or above) number instead of a statistical number (between a thousand and a quadrillion). Can they ever get that much?

There's a good reason why in our common life we almost never have numbers much greater than one quadrillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000. The total worth of the world is probably about $10-50 trillion, or in the early quadrillions of pennies. Objects that we meet in our lives, such as cars, buildings, hula hoops, gold necklaces, space shuttles and so forth, have to have a net worth less than that of the entire world, and to measure worth, we need at least a penny, which is coming close to being worthless nowadays. The worth of all these objects must therefore be less than a quadrillion of units we can perceive. This is why we see trillion a lot in our everyday lives, but not a quadrillion.

Numbers rarely get out of their ranges. I will never be able to use all of my disk drive, and the 9/11 families will never be able to collect all that money.

PRIMES is in P

That is grammatically correct. The problem called PRIMES is that of asking of a number whether it is a prime number or not; that is, whether it is divisible only by itself and 1. If I say 2773 = 47 x 59, you can check it out by multiplying those two numbers. To see whether 2773 is prime or not, we need to check all the numbers below 2773 to see if they divide 2773. There are tricks, such as only checking up to the square root of 2773, and only checking prime or odd numbers, but it still is a tedious task for large numbers. Fortunately, there is Fermat's little theorem which states that if you raise, say, 3 to the 2542 power and keep only the remainder upon division by 2543, then if 2543 is prime, you will get 1. But many composite numbers such as 561 will give 1 as well, so this is not quite a good test for primality. But if you bang around for numbers and raise them to the one-less power and get 1 every time, that is evidence, but not conclusive, that the number is prime. It was an open question as to whether it was easy to prove it is prime.

I heard in the news recently that the problem was proven to be easy; that is, "in P". This means the time it takes to solve it is proportional to some power or polynomial on the number of digits in the number. Checking each divisor out is exponentially complicated - the time it takes explodes exponentially with the number of digits in the number. The Indian mathematicians Manindra Aginwal, Nitin Saxena, and Neeraj Kayal found a much easier way of doing it, and have printed it in a paper that is available by going to http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/news/primality.html. You apply their algorithm to a number p, and in a fairly short time the computer says that it is either prime or composite. If it says it is prime, that settles it. If it says it is composite, then you have absolutely no idea of what the factors are. That is a much harder problem - so hard that secret codes and encryption are based on it.

So one by one these problems are being settled. The big one, that of P = NP, is still a long way from being solved. Will I see it in my lifetime?

Imaginique

I went to a show at Busch Gardens last night to celebrate my birthday. We chose a weekday to do it because we figured the crowds would be less. But when we got there there were long lines waiting to get in. The gates opened up 30 minutes before the start time of 8:30 pm to an enormous outdoor theater. There was room for everyone. As far as the acts themselves - it was all in fantastic color and showed some differences from other events I have been to, especially concerts and circuses. Clowns called on audience members to mimic them. Then the show started, featuring a female singer and driving music, and three women high on trapezes. Then came these tube creatures who lead to two men setting on a plank on a ball. Then came this flying shirtless man using a white dangling cloth as a swing, followed by the "work of three" - three strong looking shirtless men doing all kinds of acrobatics including standing on each other in a 3-tower. Despite the crowds, we had no trouble getting home. The show was presented on one of these balmy summer nights. It was somewhat warm, but occasionally a breeze would come. It was a really nice night and a memorable one - the night we did something unusual and traveled an hour to see an imaginative show - Imaginique. Hope to see more of this in the theme parks in the future.

Sports Society

We live in a sports society. I found this in the newspaper this morning. It was an editorial describing a hypothetical sale of baseball caps. These caps have pictures of birds on them with the name of the bird below it; nothing else. The birds on these caps are oriole, blue jay, goldfinch, and cardinal. The article commented that the goldfinch hat will sell much less than the other three, because it is not the name of a major league baseball team. That says something about our society. We are too hung up on sports. When we talk about Indians (either from India or American), there is a good chance we mean the ones from Cleveland. Mariners are not on ships but are on ballfields, quite often in Seattle. Reds are not communists or lefties; they are from Cincinnati. The Land of the Brave is Atlanta, Georgia. Vikings came from Minnesota, not Scandanavia. The only place which has patriots in this country is New England. And where does jazz come from? Certainly not from New Orleans. From Utah! Now, listen to all that Utah jazz. Cool, man.

It's not just baseball and football. This is a country where the death of Dale Earnhardt is more important than the death of Richard Nixon. It's all over the place. Maybe this is just a way of getting levity in a world full of bad news. But I rather either watch the news or go out running or swimming then watch sports on television. And maybe you will see me wearing a goldfinch hat some day.

People and Mathematics

I did an interesting summary of my activities. I do them in a computer program that inputs events in a code in an ASCII document and produces a calendar showing me the activities, with each day split into Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. I was able to input the document into Access, then Excel, where I made some pie charts. They were revealing. My occupation takes much of my time, about 168 days a year. In the rest, Toastmasters and my Unitarian Universalist congregation each come next with about a month of time each. Astronomy takes only half as much, and SUUSI half of that; that is only one week out of the year. Mathematics only takes two days - a convention every half-year. I broke out my SUUSI involvement and found that, compared to non-SUUSI times, I spend much more time on nature trips, especially to water, dancing, writing and personal growth, and some music. I also spend time on mathematics and astronomy, much of it my own workshops.

The problem is that if I want to be a mathematical columnist, writing and mathematics needs to dominate my time. But devoting time to math takes it away from people, because people are not too keen on mathematics. My activities have been drawn to people; hence SUUSI, UU congregation, and Toastmasters. It seems like my biggest problem when I retire is finding things to do during that time. It will probably have something to do with mathematics, be it teaching or applying it to something. But how to prepare? In any case I may want to go out into nature, dance, and write more than I do now.

Letter to Jesus

Today I heard of a case in Ohio where students were asked to send a letter to someone who had a big influence in their lives. One student wrote his to Jesus. His teacher told him that he could not do that because Jesus did not exist. The student replied that he existed for him, and his mother sued the school for $15 million. Ouch. People like to sue all over the place these days. I don't think the student or his mother have a case. Part of the assignment was to get a written reply, and it seemed unlikely in his case. Besides, if I was in that class, hearing that a student was writing to Jesus, I could have written to Santa Claus, or to Superman, or to Mickey Mouse, telling him how much I loved his TV show. Of course some people really think that he exists now; essentially these people would be writing to themselves, in my opinion, for only in their minds does he exist, just like Santa Claus exists in my mind. The assignment was to write a letter to a live person and get a reply, and this the student did not do. Give the student, and his mother, an F.

Praise be to Gourd

This morning at my church's Sunday service, I was given a real treat. It was not a service to God, but rather to Gourd. Instead of the usual Sunday service with sermon, hymns, and readings, the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra performed for our service. This orchestra gave us uplifting music, the type that we want to hear to uplift us in a Sunday service. The music was not only created by this orchestra, it was grown out of the soil from which all of us eventually came. The orchestra grows its own gourds. This group would be a hit at SUUSI, and at many other places as well. For a good Sunday service or an entertaining evening, consider going to a concert from this group. I bought their CDs and will listen to it on my way to work. It's a great way to start the week, for as the group says, "In Gourd We Trust".

An old friend

My wife's friend B. from her workplace called recently asking for her. She was working, so B. talked to me about a computer problem she was having, concerning a reply that she had gotten from a singer whom she had emailed recently. I solved her problem, but I also found out that the web site of this singer is http://www.everon.50megs.com. I looked up that web site and ran into an old friend, Dan Fogelberg.

I remember that his song "Nether Lands" was one of those used for something called "Free Form Dance" at my Unitarian church back in the early 1980's. We would meet at the church and clear the furniture out of some of the religious education classroom areas (it was an open-court type setting). We would play some songs and then dance to them as we see fit. There were variations, such as dancing around in circles around someone or having one person freeze and another dance around the frozen person. I found the whole thing enjoyable and "Nether Lands" was used frequently as the song we danced to. It was a good choice, with dramatic melody and dynamics changes. I liked it so much that I bought Dan Fogelberg's album. Sadly, the free form dancing went away by the mid 1980's and I have never seen it again.

Tonight I got out my Daniel Fogelberg record and played it. Yes, record. It was a 33 1/3 rpm vinyl LP disk. I got out our 29-year-old phonograph and hooked some boombox speakers to it and played it. I remembered quite well the strains of that old tune. It brought back the days of the free form dance. I was pleased to find out that he is still recording and performing, and that he is a favorite of a friend of ours.

Maybe one of these days free form dance will return to my UU congregation. In the meantime I will play my phonograph and remember.

Storm

This area of the country is affected by a prolonged drought. The forecast was for more of the same: high in the mid 90s, low in the 70s, and a 20 percent chance of an isolated thunderstorm. Well we got our 20 percent today. Boy did we ever. It showed up as a little blip to the northeast of here, but then I heard the thunder. I went outside and saw several vivid strokes of lightning in a row towards the northeast. I went in, wondering how big this was going to be. The blip on the radar showed signs of growing as well as heading to the southwest, a direction that storms don't often take in this neck of the woods. But soon I heard the thunder get louder until it BAMmed!!! almost after the brilliant flash. Then it poured. At first slowly, but then it started filling up the rain gauge until it was up to an inch. Several power blips occurred; I hoped that we were not going to have an outage with the power company on strike. Then the sky started falling. Clack, clack, clack, instead of the usual pitter patter. It was pea-sized hail. I was wondering if it was going to get any bigger. But it didn't. After a while the storm abated, came back again, and then went away. The weatherman said it was heading down I-85, but the next radar I saw of it, it was gone! Poof! Not a speck on radar.

The storm appeared, grew, boomed, poured, flashed and hailed, then it went away without a trace. Like something that just happened in the day. An ephemeral flame. A quantum particle. A brief thought in the mind that fleets the next time one thinks. And although we got an inch and a quarter and the torrent hit the reservoir, most areas went dry. And so the drought continues, and we need rain badly…

Winning speech contests

I attended a Toastmaster meeting recently in which two speakers talked about winning speech contests. One speaker gave a talk on how to evaluate another speaker. This does not seem to be about contests, except that one of the upcoming contests is about evaluation. He used a football analogy which did not always fit. The other one spoke about humorous speech contests; his humorous remarks kept our attention on him. He did say we should avoid "blue humor"; it will never win. But it did win one year at a regional conference where a speaker talked about her passionate desire for a candy bar. He said the speech had no purpose or message. To me it did - it illustrated how the flaws in our society's sexual ethics lead some to weird pursuits. He said a speech about bathroom functions wasn't funny. But it drove the audience to stitches. But he was right - the contestant did not win. I would not have selected that one as the winner either. All this shows we can't make hard and fast conclusions about things. We can't categorically say that blue speeches are inappropriate or will not win, or that they will win. It depends on the audience, which brings up an important speaker's maxim: know your audience.

Waking Up

One of the things I did at SUUSI was to take a song-writing workshop from Peter Mayer. He played in concert at SUUSI, but I never got to see him because I preferred to contra-dance. But I saw him at the workshop. He gave us the fundamentals of song-writing, inlucing rhyming, developing ideas, and developing music for the ideas. I came up with two ideas, namely a dance in a storm and a ballad about John Walker. Unfortunately, both of these ideas have already appeared in song.

Today I played one of his CDs and got attracted to "Dancing Song", in which he and his partner dance for their lives, and "Waking Up", about getting away from some of the unnecessary stuff we do in our lives. The last one would make a good theme song for next year's SUUSI, with a theme of "Simple Gifts".

Press Button to Destroy Evil Empire

About 25 years ago I read a Mad magazine parody of the movie Star Wars. It showed the final scene when Jedi fighters swooped down to the center of the Death Star with the mission of destroying it from inside. In the Mad version there is a button at the center of the Star saying "press button to destroy evil empire". I also see this gimmick used in a number of other places. For example, the ending of Independence Day shows a plane going up into the center of the invader ship seemingly pressing the button that destroys the evil empire. I see some humor in this; it is that the fearsome bad guys have seemingly purposefully made it easy for the good guys to destroy them. It dehumanizes the enemy. Just press the button and see them blow up. It makes it seem easy. Some of our leaders may think it is easy to win a war simply by pressing the right button. Further, it is a metaphor for some of the problems we encounter in our lives. There often is no button you can press that will solve your problem. No button that can bring you your ideal mate, no button that can give you an A on an exam, no button to increase the worth of your stock portfolio, and no button to eliminate poverty and its causes. Just press the button and it will destroy your evil empire. Just like I press a button up in the upper right corner of this form to publish this blog. Self-destruct, Evil Empire!

Back to real life

I am back from SUUSI. I came up with two ideas for songs, talked with a Barney doll, and contradanced and squaredanced at night. I gave my own two workshops; they were well-received. I went on two great nature hikes, to Dismal Falls and upper Cascades, both in the Blue Ridge. Some of the ideas I got at SUUSI: "I love you with all my gut."; "You can't lean on yourself."; "If you fight for what you believe, you could get hurt." The last night was one of the wildest in my life, and after SUUSI I visited the Bedford WW II memorial to the backdrop of a threatening thunderstorm, BOOM!! - made it really dramatic.

Blog from SUUSI

Here I am at SUUSI. I need to come up with ideas for a song in a workshop that I am taking. I gave my stories of the sky workshop yesterday. Today is the halfway point of SUUSI, and am going on a nature hike today. A high point was listening to Relative Viewpoint, the group who sings a different Pledge. I met a woman who has ahd misexperiences like I have had, including of course Planeattack (9/11). Basically I am here to recenter my life, as are many other people here in Blacksburg.